Romanian Workers Research Articles

Working Time During the Economic Crisis and the Impact on Romanian Working Life

In the recession period, population spent their time differently by an economic development one. In our view, the economic crisis has a major negative impact on the working time. On the basis of data provided by two statistical surveys (Time Use Survey and Labour Force Survey), the paper will analyze the current situation of the working hours of Romanian population and it presents a comparison between the total time spent at work in the period 2008-2009 and the hours spent at working places in a normal period of economic growth (2000). Underemployment is high in the crisis time. There are at least two mechanisms through which working hours fall at the level of national economy: one of them has a short term impact on the labour market deriving from the government measures and policies against the recession. The second mechanism is a consequence of the decrease of production, phenomenon with a real long term impact on the level of employment. In this study we will also analyze how the crises modify the general characteristics of the labour market.

Los determinantes de la concentración étnica en el mercado laboral español

This article provides insight on the mechanisms which determine the concentration of immigrant population in certain occupational categories in the Spanish labour market. Using survey data from the Spanish National Immigrant Survey (2007) we have firstly identified ethnic niches where Argentinean, Ecuadorian, French, Moroccan and Romanian workers concentrate. Secondly, we run multinomial logit models in order to assess the impact of human capital, social capital and contextual related variables on the likelihood of working in some of occupational categories identified previously as ethnic niches, namely: hospitality industry workers, routine agriculture workers, construction workers and domestic labour. Our main findings suggest that educational attainment, legal status, access to contacts at the time of arrival in Spain, country of origin, and previous job experience are strong predictors of the presence of foreign labour in the above mentioned niches.

The Romanian Working Group on Echocardiography: past, present, and future

The Working Group on Echocardiography (WGE) of the Romanian Society of Cardiology was formally founded in 1991. Activities related to echocardiography took place occasionally even before, as early as 1977, when a first symposium on echocardiography was held, while in 1982 a first course on cardiac ultrasound was organized in Bucharest. Romania is among the first European countries to have introduced an accreditation system in 1991 for individuals performing echocardiography and was therefore part of the initial taskforce set to help developing the European Association of Echocardiography (EAE) certification system. Our WGE currently has more than 230 active members, most of them cardiologists, and is lead by a President and a Secretary, elected for a 3-year term. It is one of the most active WGs of our Society having also the largest number of members. One of the main purposes of our WGE has always been education. The regular annual meetings held in Bucharest since 1998 with international participation were very successful with many hundreds of participants attending every time to listen …

“Ask for Bread, not Peace”

In contrast to restless students in Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi, Timiş oara, and other cities, who tried to organize rallies calling for government reforms in the fall of 1956 but failed, Romanian workers and peasants expressed their feelings about the revolution in nearby Hungary by going on feverish shopping sprees; stockpiling food staples; writing anonymous leaflets and graffiti; spreading rumors; and engaging in arson, vandalism, and physical brawls. The Hungarian crisis aroused in some citizens fears of a World War III, for others a war over Transylvania, and for still others a Hungarian-style revolt in Romania. A survey of published Securitate reports written between 26 October and 23 November 1956 shows that the three most frequent oral comments recorded were those complaining about the economy, those predicting that “what happened in Hungary will happen in Romania,” and those asking “why was the Soviet intervention necessary?” The economic complaints outnumbered the other two types of comments. Political messages, oral and written, spanned the spectrum, from fascist, Iron Guard songs, monarchist comments, to procapitalist slogans. Although most irredentist comments, oral and written, originated from cities in Transylvania, more than half of the incidents of physical aggression, including arson and other acts of sabotage, occurred in non-Transylvanian regions. Although the Securitate sometimes exploited ethnic tensions to gain recruits, Romanian citizens expressed more rage toward the communist dictatorship than against ethnic Hungarians.

Getting by in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working-Class Culture. New Anthropologies of Europe by David A. Kideckel (review)

REVIEWS 589 Kideckel, David A. Getting by in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, theBody, and Working-Class Culture.New Anthropologies of Europe. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2008. xii + 266 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Works cited. Index. $65.00; $24.95. This book forms part of a broader series called 'New Anthropologies of Europe'. It takes as its core subject theworking class, specifically the former miners, of central Romania around theJiu Valley and F?gara?, and itmaps theirpath during the deindustrialization that has blighted much ofRomania since the fall of Ceau?escu. Taking post-socialism as privileging consumption over labour and niche production over mass production, Kideckel maps the progress, or lack of progress, of theminers, as they cope with the social upheaval resulting from the triumph of individualized market relations over class and their loss of position, resources and jobs as a result. The destruction ofworking-class solidarity by themarket has been utterly devastating within these areas, and the destruction of single-industry towns within Romania and post-socialist Eastern Europe more broadly has been accompanied by a form of cultural disenfranchizement brought about by a media that extols the virtues of themarket and Europeanization. Within this new world, the values of the formerworking class as exemplified by the miners of theJiu Valley have been significantlyundermined. The choice of theminers is itselfa political act since theminers were frequendy taken as exemplars of theworking classes during socialism inmany countries.With no wages and no support system the fabric ofmany of thesemining towns has undergone a number of social changes, including significant poverty, social exclusion and changing gender politics, and a number of social issues related to stressand health problems resulting in shorter life spans as social safetynets decay and disappear. It is this social alienation and resulting change that is themain territoryoccupied by thisbook. Kideckel's work needs to be applauded on a number of counts, not least because itfocuses on an unfashionable subject inRomania. As he points out, Romanian politicians and analysts tend to concentrate on relatively high level analysis of labour markets rather than on the effects of labour market changes on individuals within theworking class. As a result he chooses quite the opposite course and provides microlevel detail on the decline of the Romanian working class, and outlines the post-socialist lives of several indi viduals as examples of how these social relations are changing. His rationale is that 'Although workers are pushed to the sidelines of post-socialist society, and although their ability to plan and act in their own interest is severely compromised, society disregards them at itsperil. Ignoring their grievances, whether expressed or not, ensures continued ferment, economic uncertainty, and demographic decline, thus derailing a humane transformation of life in the post-socialist states' (p. 11). This emphasis on 'humane transformation' is important to the thrustof the book as a whole and should be read in part as an antidote to the banks of economistic statistics that show how far post-socialist governments have been able to cut budgets. Kideckel provides a series of narratives and an excellent analysis of the changes in service provision to those who remain inwork in 59? SEER, 88, 3, JULY 20IO themost dangerous mines inRomania, particularly in his description of the decline ofmedical services as part of the overall package ofworking in this area.Whereas under socialism medical care was provided for miners and their families, the decline of core services is such that medical attention now requires bribery. Overall, this is a very valuable book that sheds considerable light on a subject that is rarely covered inmost literature on Romania. Whereas there are analyses of theminers as a political movement, there isvery little written on the effectsof cutting services and running down industries.The decline of theworking class within Romania, itsdisempowerment and increasing social problems are all here. If I have a criticism it is in the lack of statistical analysis. For example, on page 189Kideckel talks about a health survey and the resulting findings, but does not put any of the resulting statistical analysis into the text. Particularly here, Iwould have been interested in looking at trends and figures formyself as a means of shedding further light on...

Choice and constraint in migrant worker acculturation: towards a new approach

Following the unprecedented level of immigration into the UK in recent years, the issue features on a number of policy agendas, notably those around employment, where the impact of migrant workers and their relationships with indigenous workers have become topics of considerable debate. In the light of the existing evidence around migrant workers’ experience of being de-skilled and de-valued (e.g. Anderson et al 2006, Currie 2007) as well as indigenous workers’ potential hostility emerging from their fears of wage depression and substitution, the important question of how migrants negotiate their relationships within workplaces remains largely unexplored. Assuming that migrant workers are likely to be an important part of the national economy for the foreseeable future, it is time to ask the questions of how migrants negotiate their ‘fit’ into the British work environment, and how that is shaped and managed over time. In the first part of the paper we critically review the traditional conceptions of immigrant acculturation into the host society. The key concern of contemporary theories of acculturation has been with identifying individual’s orientations and how these relate to psychological adaptation (e.g. Berry 1990, Berry and Sam 1997). Significant here are also the models that recognise the interplay between hosts and migrants in forming the dispositions of the other. For example, the work of Bourhis and Montreuil (2001) suggests a variety of forms that may arise from combinations of migrants and hosts in relation to the preferred strategy of each. More recent adaptations of these frameworks have attempted to address the context dependency of acculturation strategies adopted by both migrants and indigenous members (e.g. Navas et al 2005). These latter models reveal important aspects of the divisions between public and private domains, real and ideal situations, and the ways that these can change over time. However, it is our contention that they remain limited by their location in an overly cognitive framework and a positivist research paradigm. In the second part of the paper we critically engage with this research and apply a discourse analytic approach to acculturation as a means of addressing some of the issues. We argue that despite their sophistication extant models reproduce overly static and de-contextualised accounts of acculturation. For instance, participants are methodologically fixed into a restricted number of mutually exclusive positions (either to integrate or segregate). Moreover, these positions are seen to point towards the same underlying attitudes within and across particular studies despite their taking place in different socio-historical settings (Bowskill et al 2007), most particularly labour markets. Further, such models assert the individualistic nature of the processes involved, glossing the socio-political construction of the meaning and value of acculturation. Locating the desire for, or opposition to, integration in the minds of individuals risks reifying the construct and shutting down the ways in which social practices serve to privilege or denigrate particular strategies, as well as placing the burden of adjustment on those least able to bear it. In place of these static typologies Bowskill et al suggest acculturation issues are better analysed through approaches that pay attention to ‘the micro-level construction and functions of…broader interpretive resources’ (796) but which are supplemented by a ‘macro-level attention to more global patterns of acculturation discourse and their implications for power relations’ (796). Following this approach we propose and operationalise a research agenda that pays close attention to the everyday accounts proffered by workplace actors detailing their ‘action-oriented function’ (Bowskill et al 2007: 799) and exploring their patterning by broader forces within the workplace and beyond. We present evidence around the ways in which forms of integration are positioned as moral ‘goods’; the role that indigenous workers, employers and trade unions play in such positioning; and the ways in which such positioning is accepted/contested in everyday rhetorical practice. As such the research shows how influential are the types of relationships between differing migrant groups, but also among members of the in-group, in constructing identity. For instance, based on their own observations and experiences of working next to each other, Polish individuals undergo a continual process of becoming in which they set up a contrast between themselves and other members of the in-group but also with the Romanian workers who are constructed implicitly as Poles’ opposites. This positions Polish migrant workers outside certain anticipated norms of behaviour but also under an expectation to learn them.

Building the Nation, Instrumentalizing Nationalism: Revisiting Romanian National-Communism, 1956–1989

When approaching the issue of Romanian national-communism, it is Nicolae Ceauşescu's flamboyant display of chauvinistic nationalism that comes immediately to mind. Thus, it may come as a surprise for many to learn that it was in fact Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the Stalinist leader of the Romanian Workers’ Party (RWP) and Ceauşescu's predecessor, who initiated in the mid-1950s a return to the local traditions and subsequently to an ethnic understanding of the Romanian nation. True, under the reign of Ceauşescu, the communist regime engaged in sustained policies aimed at reinforcing the ethnic ties among the Romanian majority and assimilating the historic ethnic minorities. But, in the case of Romanian communism, a nationalistic turn had already been initiated during the year 1956, under the rule of Gheorghiu-Dej. At the same time, it took a rather long period, i.e. 1956–1968, for Romanian national-communism to mature.

Importation of visceral leishmaniasis in returning Romanian workers from Spain

Over the past two decades visceral leishmaniasis cases and foci have increased in Romania, where the disease has also become a medical concern. The following study aimed to provide essential knowledge on early diagnosis and management of visceral leishmaniasis cases in Romania acquired especially by traveling and working in the Mediterranean countries. Retrospective analysis of the medical records of the patients diagnosed with imported visceral leishmaniasis in a western Romanian county. Three patients with visceral leishmaniasis imported from Spain were admitted to hospital in Timisoara in 2005. Detailed case histories along with clinical and laboratory features are presented. In all the patients the final laboratory confirmation of the disease was by Giemsa-stained blood smears obtained by bone marrow biopsy. Since 2004, many Romanian citizens left their homeland looking for a better job in the Mediterranean region. Unaware of the risks of outdoor labor in warm climatic conditions, they accepted to live and work in improper sanitary conditions. Late identification of the disease resulted mainly from failure of the physicians to diagnose and associate the syndrome with travel.

Images of the model worker in state‐socialist propaganda and novels – the case of Romania

The importance of the model worker in building the ‘multi‐faceted socialist’ society was at the heart of Communist Party propaganda in Eastern Europe. The ‘new man’, the so‐called ‘homo socialisticus’, who was prepared to sacrifice his (sic!) immediate goals and needs for the good of the society was seen to be essential for paving the road towards communism. We draw on literary work written at the height of the communist regime in Romania to shed light on some of the existing worker identities which, far from endorsing the model worker depicted in Party propaganda, highlight the mundane struggles and dilemmas of ordinary Romanian working men and women. The novel under study entitled Refuges (Buzura 1984) constitutes a landmark in modern Romanian literature and was considered a dissident novel until the Revolution from 1989.

How We Are Untranslatable and How Nobody's There to Care

Review introductionto focus: Contemporary Romanian Poetry in Translation and in Interstitial English Andrei Codrescu, Focus Editor The idea of a "Focus" on Romanian literature in English translation in the US looked simple enough at first, until I started surveying the field. The field is strewn with a variety of products of varying quality and intent that will simply not sit under one umbrella, no matter how Romanian-sounding the authors' names. The Romanian presence in American letters is fairly substantial, but only some of it is literature, and the "some of it" is not always representative of Romanian literature. Worse, the translations of even the "some ofit" that may be representative are spotty at best and atrocious in many instances. In addition to bad translations of haphazard work, there is disagreement within the Romanian literary community as to what is and what isn't "representative." Before 1989 and the fall of the Ceau§escu regime, there was very little worthwhile Romanian work in English. Unlike their Czech, Polish , or Hungarian contemporaries, Romanians produced no earth-shaking dissident tomes. Romanians excused their absence from the Cold War literature ofprotest by pointing to the greatness oftheir poetry. In Romania, it was said, poetry carried the weight of the opposition, and it was mightily feared by the tyrant and much loved by the people. In the absence of decent translations, there was no way to verify its subversive efficacy, so that assertion remained mostly unproven. On the other hand, Tristan Tzara, Paul Celan, Ilarie Voronca, Benjamin Fondane, and Gherasim Luca were well-known poets in the West since before the Second World War. These Romanian-born, Jewish poets, writing for the most part in French, had been translated almost simultaneously into English. They had, in fact, created an international idiom for poetry , a kind ofur-ground hospitable to infinite poetic experiment. The nationalist and communist epochs severed the connection with this international avantgarde . Romanian poets within the Romanian borders condemned themselves (and were condemned by the official ideologues) to provincialism. After 1989, Romanian writers felt the urgent need to be heard outside their borders, and there was a stampede of traducing. Well-respected writers , whether pre- or post- 1989, felt that they had to be read on the "outside," hoping for recognition that the increasingly bitter internecine polemics made impossible. The Romanian literary scene is contentious , the heir of innumerable storms in teapots and art-hostile political ideologies. Needless to say, most fiction didn't make it this time around either, with the exception of Mircea Cärtärescu's work. Cärtärescu, however, is the exception among Romanian fictioneers : primarily a poet, his prose has more in common with the masters of the international dream idiom pioneered by Tzara. In Romania, it was said, poetry carried the weight ofthe opposition. The poets crossed over into American English in great numbers and in a variety of craft. At first, there was only a single boat, a canoe really, named Adam J. Sorkin. The canoe that is Sorkin brought to the US dozens, maybe over a hundred, Romanian poets. Sorkin translated indefatigably for over three decades, often with the help of the poets, sometimes with the help ofthe dictionary. Even as we speak, the sea-worthy craft of Sorkin's labor is being offloaded by small press publishers far and wide. In 2006, Carmen Firan and Paul Doru Mugur's anthology Born in Utopia inaugurated a whole new understanding of Romanian poetry. For the first time, a picture of an entire poetic culture became visible. Other poets crossed in their own vessels in the first decade of the new millennium when the Internet and the open border made it possible for some younger poets to begin writing directly in English. This English (American-flavored mostly) seems to me a new language, something I call "interstitial English," a language in which a great many foreign-born writers are becoming fluent. Some of these writers have learned their English from MTV and Animal Planet before actually and physically coming to the US. Others are practicing in the interstices between literary and pop-cultural English, mixing in a variety of accents from the ethno-enclaves of...

The Impact of 1956 on the Hungarians of Transylvania

“The Impact of 1956 on the Hungarians of Transylvania”, provides a 50-year retrospective analysis of the political consequences of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 on the Hungarians in neighboring Romania. It focuses on the inter-ethnic knock-on effects in the Romanian Workers Party, the “Hungarian/Mures-Hungarian Autonomous Region”of Transylvania, and the cultural institutions of the Hungarian minority. It links these developments to present-day Romanian-Hungarian relations, both on the interstate and the intrastate levels.

Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class

Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class. Edited by Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nair. London: Routledge, 2004. 324p. 34.95 paper.What do a French-educated Algerian revolutionary, a Lakota traditionalist, Kim Dae Jung, a Romanian sex worker in Cyprus, a Guyanese cricket star of South Asian origin and his Afro-Guyanese fans, a Muslim living in Europe, a Tibetan nationalist, a child rug maker in India, and Aung San Suu Kyi have in common? Mainstream theorists of international relations would say: nothing. According to Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nair, however, the members of this unlikely crowd expose the incapacity of IR to explain or usefully contribute to some of the most important debates taking place within and between countries and regions. The stories they compile also reveal the complicity of IR in the justification and reproduction of the class, race, and gender inequalities constitutive of European and U.S. domination from the fifteenth century to today. Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations argues that although the last decade has seen much criticism of the ahistorical gender- and race-neutral rational actor model that dominates IR scholarship, its critics have neither adequately explained why this model persists nor analyzed its effects on both the participants in and the objects of international conflicts.

Furtive Selves: Proletarian Contradictions, Self-Presentation, and the Party in 1950s Romania

This paper examines the special challenges faced by working-class people in writing convincing autobiographical self-presentations for membership to the Romanian Workers' Party during the early 1950s. Special attention is paid to the nature of the verification process [verificare] required for existing and new members of the Party. I argue that the experience of one's self as always-already proletarian made the process of writing one's autobiography particularly difficult given the Party's desire for a narrative that stressed conversion to a proletarian identity.

Global Connections in a Changing World: Romanian and U.S. Nurses Unite

This article describes an international, interdisciplinary, university partnership project to collaborate with health professionals in the city of Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, Romania, to improve the health status of Romanian workers. Academic and service-based public health nurses from the United States used the model of community competence in outlining the nursing aspect of the project. This model guided the assessment, objectives, collaborative activities, and the outcome evaluation of the project. The dimensions of the model (e.g., commitment, self-other awareness, articulateness, conflict accommodation, management of relations with larger society, and leadership) were used within the context of the political and social environment of the international community.

Attitudes to child care reform in Romania: Findings from a survey of Romanian social workers

This paper presents the findings of a survey of Romanian social workers' attitudes towards two key aspects of child and family social work in their country: namely, the development of foster care, and the regulation of inter-country adoption. Major changes to the law on these matters were introduced in Romania in 1997, and the paper links the research findings with discussion of the progress, and difficulties, of putting the new legislation into practice. The research was undertaken in spring 1999, by means of a self-completion questionnaire for social workers and workers in related occupations. Comparisons between the attitudes of the two groups, and analysis of differences within the social work group, generate insights into the ways in which the new approaches to child and family welfare are taking hold in Romania. The research highlights the wide range of opinions and beliefs within the social services workforce in Romania, and draws attention to the complex interaction of professional education, workplace culture, and government policy in shaping those attitudes. The conclusion offers some thoughts on ways forward for child care policy, practice, research, and training in Romania.

The “Right Deviation” of Ana Pauker

This paper argues that the accusation of “Right Deviationism” levelled against Romanian Communist leader Ana Pauker in May 1952 was in fact based on truth, that Pauker openly opposed forcibly collectivizing a resistant peasantry and therefore scaled back collectivization efforts in late 1950 and 1951. Though Pauker was appointed Central Committee Secretary with responsibility over agriculture when collectivization was officially launched in March 1949, she was absent from the country when the Romanian Workers Party launched a campaign of forced collectivization in the summer of 1950, and took decisive steps to reverse such a policy upon resuming her duties at the end of that year—essentially halting further collectivization throughout 1951. In doing so Pauker appears to have been closely allied to CC Secretary and Finance Minister Vasile Luca, who promoted a pro-peasant policy resembling Bukharin's throughout the postwar period, and was apparently opposed by General Secretary Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. It also appears that Pauker's line on collectivization in 1951 went against the wishes of the Soviet Union, which imposed collectivization on its satellites at that time.

Familial dynamics in a Romanian worker village

My purpose in this essay is to analyze the relationship between domestic social process in Mindra, a Romanian village in southern Transylvania, as well as the transformation of the Romanian economy at large. I shall deal with the developmental cycle of the family, the processes which establish, maintain, or alter relations among families, and the relationship between these domestic processes and the economic changes that have taken place in the area over the past generation. The most im? portant of the economic changes has been the incorporation of all village lands, except for house plots and gardens, into a cooperative farm and a concurrent rapid increase in the demand for workers in nearby towns and cities. Prior to World War II most villagers were peasants who owned and worked their own land; today some income is still derived from small private plots, but the economic life of the community is dominated by the co? operative farm and the city factories. In spite of this transformation in what people do for a living, the lineally extended family and an elaborate web of social relations among village households remain remarkably strong. It is true that there are presently more households made up of nuclear families than in the past. It is also true that all of the offspring in some households have deserted the village for the city and that some households choose to minimize their participation in social net? works. The present economic situation in particular, the availability of salaried city jobs ? make these alternatives possible. Such trends are often seen as being concomitant with the process of modernization, or as an indication that modernization is taking place. Since Mindra lies in the heart of one of the most industrialized areas in Romania, and since so many villagers do earn their livings in the city, the trend might be expected to continue until the extended family, and the network of social relations between households, become mere relics of the past. However, this does not seem to be the case. Instead, economic strategies that give a prominent'place to the extended family and to strong ties among village house? holds are flourishing. This is so because such strategies make good sense, not because they are survivals from a traditional past. In order to understand this seeming paradox it is neces? sary to turn to the concrete setting, the history, and the socioeconomic dynamic of the com? munity in question.

The Romanian Communist Party and the World Socialist System: A Redefinition of Unity

Undoubtedly David Floyd is correct in his statement that “by far the most important and original of the sections [within the Romanian Workers' Party April, 1964, Statement] for the communist world as a whole was the one dealing with political relations between the communist countries, though it was the statement on Comecon which attracted most attention at the time.” Among the major points the Romanians made in this Statement was that the formal basis of relations enunciated by Khrushchev in 1955 was to become the real basis of relations among socialist nations. Relations were to be based on “the principles of national independence and sovereignty, equal rights, mutual advantage, comradely assistance, noninterference in internal affairs, observance of territorial integrity, [and] the principles of socialist internationalism.” The Romanians spelled this out in underscored print and followed it with the statement that “the strict observance of the basic principles of the new type relations among the socialist countries is the primary prerequisite of the unity and cohesion of these countries and of the world socialist system performing its decisive role in the development of mankind.”